‘The Office:’ Trouble brewing

Enough with the hour-long episodes. Sometimes they work, but this season’s first three have felt a little flabby. (I will admit, though, that if a half-hour ep would have meant losing Meredith’s request that Jim sign her cast, then maybe the super-sizing was called for this week. It looked like that image was seared into Jim’s eyeballs forever.)

Thankfully, this week’s episode was stronger than last week’s trainwreck. I’m still a little worried about Michael tilting farther and farther into Homer Simpson territory — he seems to be losing the flashes of competency that shaded his character last season. He needs a success of some kind — personally or professionally — very soon.

Cranky observations aside, there was a lot of funny stuff here. Phyllis, clutching her stack of Google printouts on dealing with difficult people while trying to deal with Angela; the Jim and Pam prank on Dwight (What is a Jim?); Ryan, so full of himself, being whooshed out of the more extravagant office he had been using for his talking head moments; Kelly ordering paper online from Dunder-Mifflin because she enjoys cyber-dropping the ream into the little shopping basket; the pizza dissussion (“hot circle of garbage” does not seem a good recommendation for a place); and — maybe best of all — Andy’s use of ABBA to try to woo Angela (as if the stolen ice sculpture weren’t enough).

There was the hint of another possible romance brewing between Daryl and Kelly, who seemed delighted by his attentions.

I’m hoping DwAngela work things out — an unkempt Dwight is a depressing sight, and him slumped over his keyboard after Angela refused to acknowledge his victory over the computer was even sadder — but I’m also hoping they don’t patch things up too soon. The comic potential of an Andy-Angela (AnAngela?) flirtation is too great to be ignored.

I was not taken with the kidnapping storyline, but I did love Michael’s line to the kid: “You don’t even know what stupid is! It’s about to get all stupid up in here!”